[Air-L] book announcement

[Peter Timusk]

My two cents worth or deux cent ( 200)

I guess part of being successful as an undergrad is being resourceful vis a
vie books. I still bought every course book expect professor prepared essay
collections when I was an undergrad. The essay collections I researched and
found in the library.

What's wrong with using a university library as our universities here allow
the general public some borrowing rights? Two books that Barry Wellman
posted titles of I found at the local U libraries. Of course, this doesn’t
solve the developing world access and may be the developing world should pay
attention less to the developed world's research agenda. And here the
general public has a hard time getting online journal access from the U
libraries.

One of my professors has this site on her web page http://www.addall.com for
buying text books which will search for the cheapest price including
shipping. This may put the university book stores out of business eh?

Going on the basis of one large multi volume set on Research Ethics I
borrowed a volume of from school, I would say the size was off putting. May
be I can not cope with large books unless they are photo coffee table books.
Volume of this size in my use are used for one chapter or less, or as a
reference like some Oxford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy where I read the
entry on computer ethics and put the book back on the reference shelf. I
don't buy these reference books generally for personal use. I also have seen
professors buying on amazon and they explain to me that they spend their
grant money buying books. So yes being in a position of money is different.

Now the Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics ed Luciano
Floridi, I am borrowing and reading slowly and it is not a big book and
Charles Ess is coauthor of a chapter I have read already. The cost is about
36.87$ CND for paperback on Amazon.ca. This is typical for a social sciences
book (IMHE) but up about 10$ from 25 years ago I would guess. I like this
book.

In my math courses the books, and these are textbooks students are expected
to buy in each course, run in the 80$ to 160$ range. Law books run at 25$ to
45$ for criminal codes and then 60$ or so for case analysis or annotated
criminal code books in basic undergrad courses. I think in advanced law you
would be paying more.

Anyways thanks for reading and I hope this helps the discussion. I am going
back this morning to learning Gplot in SAS for my nine to five job from the
huge collection of published online for free SAS conference proceedings.
Although the cheapest SAS publishing book in Kindle Edition is about 38$.

Peter Timusk
at571 at ncf.ca
ptimusk at sympatico.ca
web: www.crystalcomputing.net
blogs www.cyborgcitizen.org

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles Ess
Sent: March-09-11 1:58 AM
To: Nathaniel Poor
Cc: Air list
Subject: Re: [Air-L] book announcement

Hi Nat,
yeah, unhappy that - also happened with our AoIR friends and colleagues
Lisbeth Klastrup, Jeremy Hunsinger, and Matthew Allen, whose _International
Handbook of Internet Research_ now lists at $260.00 on Amazon, with a
discount down to 213.20.
Clearly, very few researchers, much less students will buy either of these
in the hardcover.  So far as I can tell, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and
others are following what seems to be a standard practice of trying to get
maximum return on a first hardcover printing that mostly libraries will buy
up; they will then make available a softcover edition at a lower price.

(Interestingly, Peter Lang - including the Digital Formation series edited
by Steve Jones - seems to be following a different practice, at least with
regard to another book forthcoming, _ Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary
Perspectives_, co-edited with May Thorseth, priced at $34.95 for the
paperback.  Perhaps Steve will have some helpful light to shed on these
matters as well?)

I would be the first to point out that "standard practice" does not of
itself equal "right" or "justified".  Rather, along with more or less every
other scholarly organization, we've debated the publishers vs. open source
approaches for years, along with the theoretical and practical matters of
print-based notions of copyright in a digital age, etc.  FWIW, I think both
have important roles and places, along with serious deficits and problems.
A good friend and colleague, in particular, is consistently reminding me of
how prices like these keep important, perhaps essential scholarship out of
the libraries and hands of colleagues and students in developing countries,
something I'm certainly unhappy about.  At the same time, of course, there
are also, um, enterprising workarounds, some more legal than others (imagine
my pleasure at discovering that one of my books has been made freely
available as a bitTorrent download ... smile).

Perhaps AoIR and AoIRists can come up with better solutions to the current
conundrums? I'd be happy to see that, of course.
In the meantime, I also hope that these critical concerns won't diminish our
sense of shared pleasure in the scholarly accomplishments and contributions
made by the contributors to the volume.

cheers,
- charles
Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab Helsingforsgade 14
8200 Århus N.
Denmark
mail: <imvce at hum.au.dk>
tel: (+45) 8942 9250

Professor, Philosophy and Religion
Drury University, Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23





On 3/8/11 9:40 PM, "Nathaniel Poor" <natpoor at gmail.com> wrote:

> Charles-
> 
> The Amazon link you sent lists the book at $US 200 (well ok $199.95 
> and then a discount, but $200).
> 
> Is that accurate?
> 
> I know that's the hardcover, but if that's the price how is anyone 
> going to buy it?
> 
> Even the Kindle edition is $150.


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